Bitching and cussing her way to the top … Wanda Sykes performs in front of President Obama in Washington. Photograph: Rex Features

Title: Sick and Tired

Year: 2006

The setup: You may already know Wanda Sykes as "Wanda Sykes", the querulous friend and neighbour in Curb Your Enthusiasm who is suspicious of men generally, white men especially, and Larry David in particular. And, yup, that has her about right. Gay, black and female, she occupies a very small intersection in comedy's Venn diagram – and surely has plenty to be furious about – yet she bitches and cusses about the ways of the world almost indifferently, like a proud old dowager. Despite being (at 42, when this show was recorded) not very old at all.

But then most of this, just like in Curb, is ripe self-parody. Consider her complaint about the "racist dolphin" she once had to swim with in Hawaii. It posed happily with white tourists, she laments, but in her picture seems to be straining to get away. "I was like, 'Fuck you, dolphin, you bottle-nosed bastard! What is this shit?'" It seems to be Sykes's lot in life. Almost like she's seeking out fresh snubbings for the pleasure of the reprimands.

If not quite yet a national treasure in America, she is at least a well-loved good egg. The warmth of this audience's welcome for her is almost overwhelming. Mostly her commonsense approach to life makes her a liberal. For instance: "If you don't believe in same-sex marriage, then don't marry someone of the same sex. I don't understand people all up in arms over shit that don't affect them." Yet she is just as capable of outrage over excessive federal spending. "To me," she says, "the space programme is nothing but a welfare programme for really, really smart people." (And on this subject, as a former employee of the National Security Agency, she knows whereof she speaks.)

Funny, how? Sykes is at heart an actor. She's known for the political content of her shows, for her views on men and women, and on gay rights; but she really comes alive when she is doing a scene. She's terrific when she stages a conversation with her mother about computers. ("Whenever my parents send me an email, the first three are always blank.") Sometimes rather a lot of scaffolding is needed to get a playlet built, but Sykes always earns laughs for how well she plays it.

Which is not to say she lacks the other talents. Her observations are very sharp – for instance that she doesn't like to watch porn in the living room because it's "so low-class". Her choice of phrase can be delicious too – such as when she describes a reluctance to invest in stocks by saying: "I've got stay-at-home money. I want my money barefoot and pregnant."

Basically you tune in to Wanda, though, for Wanda. Or perhaps for "Wanda". Either way you finish happier, with the kind of warmth that only comes after a nice long moan.